Development of Cerebral Blood Flow and Cerebral Blood Volume Quantification Procedures using MRI without Contrast Agents

现代医学成像方法改变了许多疾病的诊断和治疗。到目前为止，大多数成像只用于显示疾病在大脑等器官中的位置，帮助医生做出包括癌症或中风在内的诊断。最近已经开发了许多技术，能够提供关于大脑的额外信息，例如供应组织的血液量，或大脑不同部分的血管密度。这些技术不仅在医院有用，还被制药公司用来提供关于他们的新药是否效果良好的更好信息。然而，许多新的成像技术涉及侵入性程序，如注射，或涉及将患者暴露在电离辐射中。我们希望开发使用磁共振成像(MRI)的新的完全非侵入性技术，能够对大脑中的血流和血管密度进行准确和绝对的测量。在与更成熟的侵入性技术验证了这些测量的准确性后，我们将使用它们来确定它们在检测因将药物引入体内而引起的变化方面有多有用。我们还将使用新技术来评估它们检测供脑动脉部分堵塞的患者异常模式的能力。如果成功，这些技术可能会在更快地开发治疗疾病的新药以及诊断和治疗一些脑部疾病方面得到更广泛的应用。

Modern medical imaging methods have transformed the diagnosis and treatment of a number of diseases. To date, most imaging has been used to show only the location of disease in organs such as the brain, helping doctors make diagnoses that include cancer or stroke. Recently a number of techniques have been developed that are able to provide additional information on the brain, such as the amount of blood supplying the tissue, or the density of blood vessels in different parts of the brain. As well as being useful in hospitals, these techniques are also being used by drug companies to provide better information on whether their new drugs are working well. However, many of these newer imaging techniques involve invasive procedures, such as injections, or involve exposing the patient to ionizing radiation. We wish to develop new totally non-invasive techniques using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that will be able to make accurate and absolute measurements of blood flow and vessel density in the brain. After verifying the accuracy of these measurements against more established invasive techniques, we will then use them to determine how useful they are in detecting changes caused by introducing a drug into the body. We will also use the new techniques to assess their ability to detect abnormal patterns in patients whose arteries that feed their brain have become partially blocked. If successful, these techniques could then find wider application in the more rapid development of new drugs to treat disease, and in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of brain diseases.